✭✭✭✭✩

music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz,

book by Winnie Holzman, directed by Joe Mantello

Mirvish Productions, Canon Theatre, Toronto

March 31-April 24, 2005

Wicked, the Stephen Schwartz musical beginning its sold-out run in Toronto, has much to recommend it.  Based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel about the witches in pre-Dorothy Oz, it tells a fascinating, uncannily relevant story about prejudice, PR and abuse of power.  Visually, it’s the most stunning musical Toronto has seen since The Lion King, with eye-popping Art Deco designs imaginatively extrapolated from the classic film. 

Among the uniformly strong cast, Stephanie J. Block has the intensity and clear, soaring voice to create a riveting Elphaba, an outcast because of her green skin, whom a sequence of tragedies gradually molds into the Wicked Witch of the West.  Helium-voiced Kendra Kassebaum is Glinda, Elphaba’s goody-goody roommate, a kind of bubble-brained Gidget with heart.  Carol Kane plays the insidious Mrs. Morrible as the evil twin of Mrs. Slocum from Are You Being Served?

It’s too bad Winnie Holzman’s book distrusts Maguire and chooses a cop-out ending, and it’s a shame Schwartz’s musical imagination never rises to the level of its subject and stays oddly mired in homogenized ‘70’s pop rock when the story requires something darker, wilder, more distinctive.  Yet, given the fantastic production, you’ll likely exit humming the scenery.    

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-04-07

Photo: Stephanie J. Block and Kendra Kassebaum.